I’m in the majority
Posted by Paola
I’ve been thinking a lot about Horizon’s Why Thin People Are Not Fat and have come to some conclusions. I think there are various reasons why people are over-weight, but I think that there are quite a few people like me when it comes to food.
Most people are bigger than they’d like
I’d always thought of myself as in the minority, that I was excluded from the normal-sized-people club. But one of the things said on the programme was that it was the fat people who would survive a famine in pre-historic times of feast and famine.
Early humans ate when they could – from what they could hunt or harvest – but food wasn’t regular. When food was scarce, those who had a tendency to put on weight would be those most likely to survive. They’d survive to procreate and pass on their over-eating genes.
It seems to me that, as a survival technique for the species, over-eaters are in the majority of today’s population.
However, in western society, we’re surrounded by a constant feast – very few people face famine here. When coupled with a tendency to over-eat, people are just getting bigger and bigger.
Whereas before these people were healthier, the programme said that they are now the least healthy and have shorter life-spans.
It’s not greed
Given a genetic disposition of eating too much, it seems that, whereas a minority of people eat what they like and don’t get fat (the subjects in the programme’s three-week experiment), they just have ‘proper’ appetites and efficient mechanisms to stop them over-eating.
It’s not about will power.
It’s not that bigger people are greedier; it’s that their appetite isn’t rooted in hunger and that the mechanisms to say when to stop eating don’t work properly.
Why we aren’t all the same size
It would be a biological marvel if , we over-eaters, had exactly the same appetites; the logical conclusion is that the degree to which our appetites and stop-eating mechanisms are ‘broken’ vary from person to person.
How I over-eat
I’d like to quantify what eating is like for me:
- I enjoy the experience of eating even if I am not hungry
- I eat fast
- Flavour and texture are big factors – I add crisps to otherwise mushy sandwiches
- I add salt, relishes, pickles and sauces to boost the flavour
- I enjoy programmes where people are seen eating and describing what they are eating (I now fast-forward on MasterChef to the tastings)
- I like to cook – I tend to make things up as I go along
- I prefer savoury foods but have recently sought out sweet foods
- I (used to) eat only because I felt like eating something (the whole preparing and consuming part), not because I was hungry
- I was very rarely hungry
- If I am depressed, I will eat until I am feeling very full but then still want to eat more
- Presented with a plate or bowl of s0mething I like, I’d want to (and would, if no one was watching) eat it all
- I watch to see how much other people eat at social occasions to work out what’s acceptable
- I choose not to buy/keep things in the house that I have trouble resisting (e.g., crisps)
- I don’t think about food all day
- If (now, on a diet) I go to bed hungry, I will often come up with a new concoction for the next day
- If I face a ’small’ amount of food when I am hungry (e.g., a small bowl of soup), I feel panicky, that it’s not enough and that I will go hungry. But if I just eat it calmly anyway, I’m satiated afterwards.
- I feel compelled to finish every last morsel of food on my plate. It actually bothers me not to.
It’s not my fault
Well, I do take responsibility for my being over-weight but it’s now in the context of recognising that I have an over-active appetite, one that doesn’t reflect what my body actually needs.
Whereas some other people can go through their day not thinking about food, and eating what and how much they like, I will always have to be conscious of what I eat, monitor my own hunger and body, because I cannot rely on my appetite to tell me when to stop eating.
Good Food Habits
Posted by Sylvia
Today I was making chili con carne with my 13-year-old son; I’ve been teaching him how to cook. Just before dinner, we’re sorting out the toppings: grated cheddar, green onions, sour cream. He gets the cheese out of the fridge and cuts off two small slices before he starts grating – one for him and one for me. ARGH, did I teach him that?
I know I take in a huge amount of “hidden calories” tasting and testing things in the kitchen. If we do a big dinner party, I eat like a bird – because I’ve been nibbling the whole time I was cooking. So looking at dieting in terms of life-style changes, that’s a clear habit that has to go, food eaten standing up does have calories too.
I need to eat less cream and less butter and less cheese – I’ve been doing food tracking and already spotted them as the primary culprits in my diet. I’m trying to increase the amount of vegetables in every meal because that ends up reducing down the high calorie food. But the habit of mixing a tablespoon of butter into every veg probably isn’t a good one.
Writing down the calories of each meal definitely does help – I was doing that and our calorie intake dropped right down. But I found it hard to keep up in a vacuum, it really didn’t seem like it would matter if I updated or not – couldn’t I just keep the meals lower cal without counting every damn meal?
Looks like I can’t – within a week I just wasn’t bothering any more. And lately I’ve barely even been doing my exercise. So I’m glad to be here with you guys, doing the same thing. Just reading over the past few days has made me feel motivated. I want to put some thought into Anna’s questions and write about what I want to do and why over the weekend. On Monday I’ll weight myself (ugh), try to take some photos (fun!) and go back to tracking calories, although I’m not setting a daily goal (yet) because at the moment, lunch time meals are not in my control. Still, I know that just tracking it all will make a difference – simply the awareness.
I’m trying to think of it as a learning process rather than just a diet. And that’s one habit that I want to get into.
Monday Moaning
Posted by Simon
My stomach hurts today. Here’s why.
8am-3pm Snackfast 400 cals
Over most of the day I was working away saying to myself ‘oh, I’ll have breakfast in a minute’, and in the mean time consuming a granola bar, some crunchy ‘crisp bag’ snacks, and a banana.
5pm Dinner 1010 cals
So by dinner I was starving, so made it bigger than normal, because I was extra hungry, I’d ‘need more’. Which I now realise is rubbish. I had fish finger wraps, with some new coleslaw (addition: capers, peas!). Fingers 400, wraps 360 cals! (Mission brand wraps were on sale, 180 cals each, cos they are bigger than the Discovery ones, remember your Pi-r-squared folks!), slaw 200 cals, mayo 50 cals.
A big grand of calories. I had one too many fingers, and those wraps being bigger, I could probably get away with just one and more filling.
Moral: your eyes are bigger than your belly, even when you feel full half way through you just keep eating. No wonder you have a sore stomach now, 2.5 meals worth of calories in one go is TOO MUCH
Running Total 1410 cals
A low total so far, I feel compelled to eat more, as 1400 doesn’t seem enough. I’ll drink lots and see later if I’m actually hungry or not.
10:30pm Supper 250 cals
Peckish, but wanted something easily digestible, so banana & goat smoothie.
Daily Total 1660 cals
My starvation then eat all at once had a good effect on calorie intake, but I think I’d have prefered it more spread out!
Dieting makes me happy
Posted by Paola
I am happy.
I don’t normally think of myself as a happy person but, really, the last few weeks I have been happy about losing weight and, on my weekly weigh-in days, euphoric.
Keeping this food diary has been a revelation to me. It’s a perfect fit for my personality and losing weight now seems achievable.
My diet
I don’t have a particular diet. All I am doing is keeping within 1,200 calories a day – as advised by my GP – to lose weight.
To do that, I have to know how many calories I have consumed during the day. I slipped into a documenting process unintentionally soon after starting this food diary.
If anyone had told me a few months ago that I’d be counting calories, I’d have laughed at them; I resisted it for years. But it works for me.
What I thought about dieting
Up until I started this food diary, I assumed that I would be miserable on a diet. I even saw psychiatrists and psychologists about it, asking them to help me be happy on a diet or be happy as I was, fat.
I believed that, in order to lose weight, I’d have to be hungry a lot, go without any nice food and be constantly miserable and food-obsessed. The short-term pleasure of eating won out over the long-term imagined pain of dieting, even if it meant putting up with the self-loathing.
Temptation
A few years ago I had an epiphany and realised I couldn’t eat what I wanted when I wanted; my appetite can’t be trusted, either because my brain’s wired wrong or from bad habits.
I now don’t have certain things around if they are likely to tempt me – for example, proper butter or crisps (which I now consider a rare treat).
Shame and self-loathing
For me, ever since I started putting on weight, I felt ‘outside’, not really part of things. I avoid meeting up with old friends because I am embarrassed about how big I got; I feel that I should apologise or warn them in advance – how mad is that!
I resigned myself to the fact that I would never wear nice clothes again. I would love to go swimming or skiing but won’t. Summer is always difficult because I cover up rather than strip down. I sweat at the least bit of exertion; I used to be a competition-level table tennis player and only stopped playing because I was embarrassed at how much I sweated.
And, finally, I felt that I was gonna to die early from a stroke or a heart attack.
And I’m not alone
I’ve been following some of the other food diary bloggers and can totally relate to what they say about how they feel about themselves.
Alice wrote:
I deserve to feel like I am worth something. I deserve to gain my confidence back. I deserve to stop feeling so damn insecure and awful about myself. I hate that I’ve shut myself from the world. I hate hiding from life.
And:
What floors me is the occasional jolt I’ll get when I suddenly realize, I’ll never be like other women. There are triggers for these breakdowns. Last night was the Oscars and as I watched all those beautiful actresses parade down the red carpet in there high stilleto heels, I suddenly felt very very sad…sad because I can NEVER wear heels, sad because [...] I feel like I’m missing out on the best years of my life.
This is from a heart-wrenching letter Amanda wrote to herself:
Why do you feel like you are not worth taking care of? Why do you treat your body well one week and then sabotage it all the next? Why do you think you feel so depressed? Have a good look at yourself. You hate yourself at the moment. You feel horrible. You look terrible. You feel like you are drowning in in your own fat. You feel unattractive because all you see when you look in the mirror is a chubby face looking back at you. [...]
[Y]ou are wallowing in self pity, you spend endless hours of thinking about how you want to lose weight but you don’t do anything about it. [..] Stop living in the past and thinking about where you went wrong, live for today, move on and make it right. [...]
Candy does not make you happy, you eat it and you regret it and then you feel like shit and you tell yourself to just eat more. JUST STOP IT!!! Don’t buy the crap in the first place. Don’t binge on stuff just because it is there and just because you feel like you have blown everything so hey it won’t hurt to make yourself even bigger than you are now.
Ending with:
Amanda, you know deep down that you have the potential to be so much more. You are sick of feeling this way, it is so time consuming and depressing, life is too short to be depressed about the way you look, when you have the power to change yourself. Start putting in the time and the energy to reaching your dreams and goals. Stop with all of the self pity and wishing, wishing will get you nowhere. You have to believe in yourself, you have to have faith in yourself, you have to push yourself because no one else will, you have to want to lose weight for yourself and you know you do. How many times do I have to say this to you? JUST DO IT AMANDA. You know you can.
Who’s in control?
It’s not nice feeling at the mercy of temptation, giving food control over my happiness. That I have to put food out of sight or out of reach gives food control.
Sure, dieting has made me think a lot more about food, but I am taking back control.
How I feel now
I feel happy that I am in control of what I am eating. I am happy that I can eat tasty food whenever I am hungry. (The only exception is at night-time. I now often go to bed hungry but I draw pride and strength from that hunger, knowing that I am achieving something.)
I feel happy that I am making progress.
The euphoria I feel when I’ve lost 3-4lbs in a week keeps me going for a couple of days.
I have learnt so much about food by keeping this diary that I do not think I will put weight on anytime soon. I might maintain my weight but I’d have to make a conscious decision to over-eat to put on weight now.
I feel lighter, more nimble. I don’t get so puffed by walking briskly.
I cannot yet see a difference in my face or body but I do notice a difference in my clothes. Last year, when I put on a lot of weight, I had to stop wearing my normal trousers as they became too tight. I bought elasticated ‘joggers’ (ah, the irony) and wore them to meetings and social events. I can now wear my zipped trousers again (but still wear the joggers at home – so comfy!).
Yes, I still hate the way I look and am embarrassed about being a big blob but I now see it as a transition stage; by the end of the year, I should be near my target weight for the first time in thirty years.
I still have lots of weight to lose but my progress keeps me going.
I know about the brick wall that stops people from committing themselves to a diet. Ya think it’s gonna be a hard lonely slog. And I know it’s easier to stay as one is – even though one despises oneself – than make such a big change.
But I found a way that works for me – I hope you do too.
Big portions
Posted by Paola
I just found something I very much recognise in another dieter’s blog.
She wrote:
Tonight when I was cooking dinner I was faced with a choice. I knew I was making chicken, spinach + garlic and roasted acorn squash. Then my husband said that he would rather have a baked potato instead of the squash. (The thing to understand here is that a baked potato for him (and really for me too) doesn’t simply mean a potato that has been put in the oven. It means a potato that has been put in the over + butter, sour cream, cheese, diced ham, and just about anything else he can throw on there). So… I thought about it for a minute and finally settled on making *him* a baked potato and making me the acorn squash.
In the end, of course, this was the right decision, (for me anyway) but the thing I’m struggling with is that I made the right decision for the wrong reason.
I didn’t choose the squash over the potato because it was better for me or because I didn’t want to risk the temptation of loading my potato with a zillion and one fattening toppings. No… I chose the squash because in my mind I’d tabulated the calories and had determined that if I ate the squash I could actually EAT MORE but without as many calories.
[From The Elephant in the Room @ Fat As Hell...]
I see it as finding ways to binge. Before I started this food diary, whenever I was left home alone, I’d usually see it as an opportunity to raid the fridge or biscuit jar. I don’t do that anymore but I still binge through having big portions – and calculated big portions at that.
Now that I am in a calorie-counting routine, my next step must be to eat less more often.
The fear of buffets
Posted by Paola
When you eat more for pleasure rather than hunger, buffets are a scary place to be.
I have memories of being a kid and feeling dread when walking into a room and seeing a table covered with sandwiches, sausages, cheese, sweets and crisps (potato chips). I would look at it all and my mind would go “whoa!”.
I remember thinking “HOW do the others manage to eat so little?” Because, even as a kid, I clearly remember looking at a bowl of crisps and thinking I want to eat the WHOLE BOWL and knowing that I would if no one else was there.
So, I’d pick up a plate and, while looking around to see how much was on other people’s plates, I would add stuff to mine. I had to concentrate to make sure I didn’t make a big pile of food on mine, even though I wanted to, because then people WOULD KNOW.
I’d eat what was on my plate, while looking around, seeing that the others seemed to be content and not going back for more, and wonder how they did it.
The problem with a buffet is that there is no obvious end. With a meal, you have your serving on a plate and you know when you’re done. At a buffet, you have an empty plate and are faced with bowls of food which, after taking a portion, will still have loads left.
So, my heart still sinks when I see a buffet table at a party.
Do you want a chocolate?
Posted by Paola
I get annoyed when people ask me if I want a cookie, cake, chocolate, whatever.
OF COURSE I DO!
But you only have to look at me to know that I SHOULDN’T eat it.
Sure, we are adults and should be responsible enough to exercise control but I think that it’s like offering booze to an alcoholic.
Okay, it is not fair to say that alcoholism and over-eating are necessarily a similar physiological condition. But please don’t make it harder by offering me something we both know I should decline.
